Chapter 55
55
‘Right, hon, well, if you’re sure that’s what you want?’ Gemma’s voice was laced with concern, and Charlotte felt her throat constricting again as she tried to reply.
‘It is,’ she managed. Gemma had collected Charlotte and Comet from Nightshade Cottage the following morning, and they were now on their way back up to Bristol. Charlotte had said a fond goodbye to Lorelai, after filling her in on the information that Todd had recovered from Professor Jacobson’s interview. Lorelai had been devastated at the part her brother had played in the death of her son and his wife, albeit indirectly, but now Philip’s withdrawal from the family made a lot more sense. She’d promised to send Lorelai a copy of the audio file, and in return, Lorelai had given her the documentation that her brother had withheld from the observatory’s records room, that she’d been sifting through when Thea and Tristan had called in. It contained, to Charlotte’s trained eye, valuable information about the first discovery of Volucris by Martin and Laura and gave a very good case for getting them recognised as its locators. Charlotte promised it would take its rightful place among the papers in the North West Wessex archives, and was looking forward to finishing the story. Charlotte had also sent Lorelai the photograph of LBAS she’d found – she hoped it would be of some comfort to all the family.
As she sat in Gemma’s car, watching the miles mount up between her and Lower Brambleton, she couldn’t help ruminating on the twists and turns that had brought her to this point. At the start of the summer, she had had no idea of the secrets she was going to be uncovering in Lower Brambleton Observatory’s past, and how they were so heavily intertwined with the family of the man she’d fallen in love with. Those two facts felt now like the eclipsing binary itself: she’d uncovered the truth about a major discovery, but in the process the truth had triggered a response in Tristan that showed just how far he needed to travel along his own path of healing before he was ready to love and trust again. The two realities were in orbit together, one affecting the other as they took turns at taking precedence in her life and in her mind. She’d called a pause in their relationship, but she’d had enormous provocation to do so, having faced the very real prospect of her own death in a condemned building.
‘You know you and Comet can bunk with me anytime, though, right?’ Gemma said, breaking into Charlotte’s gloomy thoughts. ‘You don’t really want to be all alone in the halls until the students descend, do you?’
‘I could do with the solitude,’ Charlotte replied. ‘It’s always chaos when the students arrive. It’ll be nice to have some peace before then.’
‘I get that,’ Gemma said, putting her foot down to overtake a tractor and trailer laden with a crop of cider apples that was meandering up the A38 at a snail’s pace. ‘But after everything you’ve been through… are you sure being alone is what you really need?’
Charlotte forced a smile. ‘You know me,’ she said, reaching back to ruffle Comet’s head. He was stretched out on the back seat of the Touareg as though he owned it. ‘I’m never alone with this fella. And I’ve got enough to organise, overseeing the observatory papers into the archive, anyway. Not to mention the last-minute additions. There’s a transcript of Professor Jacobson’s interview to sort out, and I need to talk to Professor Edwin when he’s back about getting some posthumous recognition for the Ashcombes… I’ll have a lot to do.’
‘Well, if you change your mind, you know where I am,’ Gemma said. ‘And at least come round for dinner tomorrow night. We’ll have a proper postmortem of what happened between you and Tristan over a bottle of wine. You can bring the mutt, too.’
‘Thanks.’ Charlotte smiled at her friend. ‘That I will take you up on.’
Gemma helped her take her boxes and cases to her flat on the ground floor of the student accommodation building, and then hugged her goodbye. ‘I hate leaving you here when it’s so empty,’ she grumbled. ‘It’s like a bloody ghost town.’
‘Rather these ghosts than the ones in Lower Brambleton,’ Charlotte said ruefully. She felt relief at being back on familiar territory, but that relief was tinged with sadness. Her time in Somerset hadn’t all been awful: she’d made friends in Nick and Annabelle Saint and grown fond of Lorelai. Thea was on the way to being a friend, and Tristan… well. That was a thought for another time. For the moment, she needed to get herself set back up in the flat.
‘Come on, old chap,’ she said to Comet, who was already sniffing hopefully at the back door of her flat. Being on the ground floor, she had two entry points to her accommodation, one which led directly out to the communal green space known as ‘Hangover Row’ where first year undergraduates could be seen trying to mooch off their nausea after a heavy night in Bristol’s hotspots. It was also a good space to give Comet his morning and evening constitutionals, and while it lacked the scope and beauty of the woodland behind Nightshade Cottage, it was expansive enough for Comet.
Comet bounded around, sniffing and rediscovering all his familiar spots, while Charlotte tried to readjust to the sights and sounds of the city. The traffic felt too loud, and the frequent roaring of the planes overhead, coming in to land at Bristol Airport, intruded on her thoughts. She hadn’t realised how accustomed she’d got to the quiet until she was back in the noise of the city.
At least the sun was still out, she thought. She sat down on the bench that was placed alongside the path that ran from the green space to the entrance to the halls. Comet, after checking in with her, scampered away again, but remained within sight. Charlotte sighed. She thought being back here was what she needed, but now she wasn’t so sure. The thought of the new term, which was just around the corner and usually filled her with such hope and optimism, now just seemed to fill her with dread.
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘This isn’t going to be how you deal with things.’ She stood back up from the bench and pulled her phone out from her back pocket when she felt it buzz.
Todd had written:
Jacobson’s willing to go on the record. Looks like Martin and Laura Ashcombe will get their footnote for Volucris after all.
Charlotte’s eyes blurred with tears. If nothing else, she thought, that was a result. She instinctively began to text Tristan with the news, but then paused. After everything that had happened between them, she wasn’t sure whether telling him by text was the best option. But now she was back in Bristol she couldn’t exactly pop down and break the news to him in person, either. Putting her phone away, she called Comet and wandered back into the flat. She needed to think, and she always did her best thinking in one place: the archive.
‘Come on, old chap,’ she said, grabbing her backpack and filling up her water bottle. ‘Let’s get back to work.’
And work she did, for the next four weeks. The archive boxes had been periodically arriving all through the summer, and she now had to make sure they were filed appropriately in the North West Wessex Astronomical Archive. Having sifted through everything on site, this should have been a fairly straightforward process, but Charlotte kept lingering on things as she double checked them before putting them away in the slots that had been allocated for the archive boxes. She felt as though she wanted to keep the memories of the summer alive. It might have ended traumatically, but Lower Brambleton Observatory had been a turning point in her life: it was her first solo project; she’d unearthed some findings that had hitherto been forgotten; and she’d fallen in love into the bargain.
‘Everything all right?’ Professor Jim Edwin, her boss, poked his head around the door.
‘Yup.’ Charlotte forced a smile. ‘I think I’ve just about finished here.’
Professor Edwin nodded. ‘You did a great job. Shame there weren’t any nuggets to add to the Winslow papers, but chasing the thread of Volucris was inspired.’
Charlotte felt her face burning at the praise. ‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t expect to be coming back here with a discovery, but it’s exciting to have played a part in righting a historical wrong, or an oversight, at least.’
Professor Edwin went to leave her office, but just before he did, he added, ‘Oh, I almost forgot – there’s a parcel down in reception for you. Courier dropped it off an hour ago. I’d have brought it up, but I had my hands full with a month’s worth of post.’
Rather mystified, Charlotte wondered what might be waiting for her. She sometimes had the odd Amazon order delivered to work, since she’d had parcels go astray when they were delivered to the halls of residence, but she couldn’t recall ordering anything recently.
‘Thanks, Prof,’ she said. ‘I’ll pop down and see what it is.’ Closing the door on Comet, who was snoozing peacefully in his basket, she ambled down the stairs to reception. There, waiting by the staff pigeonholes, was a large brown box, securely wrapped with thick parcel tape, with a handwritten label. The address read:
Dr Charlotte James, Department of Astronomy, University of North West Wessex
From the date mark on the stamp, which she could just about make out, it had been around the houses before arriving here.
Curiously, she took hold of the box, feeling its substantial weight and wondering what she’d been sent. There was no return address, and the post mark had been smudged where the location would have been. Hurrying back up the stairs to her office, she placed the parcel down and hunted for a pair of scissors to cut the tape. Carefully, in case whatever was inside could be caught by the scissors, she sliced the tape on the box flaps and opened it up. It was full of polystyrene packing chips, and, smiling at the memory of Comet crashing through a box of them when he was a pup, she plunged her hands in, trying not to spill any on the floor.
The first thing she felt was an envelope, which had her name on it. The small, slightly spidery handwriting wasn’t familiar, but at least she knew whatever had been sent to her definitely wasn’t from Todd. She’d seen his signature many times over the course of their relationship and his flamboyant scrawl was easily recognisable. Thumbing open the seal, she drew out a letter on the same high-quality cream paper as the envelope. There was only one page, but as her eyes scanned what was written, her hands began to tremble.
Dear Charlotte,
I hope you’re well and enjoying the new academic year. I’ve been meaning to send this on to you, as, in light of everything you discovered over the summer about my parents and their connection to Volucris, I thought it was only fitting that you became its custodian. To be frank, I don’t really know how to use it anyway, as you saw that starry night at my house over the summer. I don’t know whether it’s better in the archive or in your care – it’s up to you whether you want to see it as a gift or as another artefact for the Observatory Field collection, but in view of the part Great-Uncle Philip played in Mum and Dad’s lives, I no longer feel as though it belongs with me. It’s a beautiful instrument, and I wanted someone to have it who would be able to make the best use of it. If you want to keep it, then I’m happy for you to do so, but if you’d rather put it in the archive, then that’s fine by me, too.
I also wanted you to know that I’ve been seeing someone.
That sentence, right at the bottom of the page, made her stop in her tracks. Charlotte’s heart did a little painful thump as the words registered with her entire body. She and Tristan had called a pause, that was true, but she hadn’t imagined he’d move on so quickly. Maybe he wanted to just forget it had all happened? The way things had been left between them had been traumatic, but she still faintly hoped that they’d see each other again eventually.
Realising she was just staring at the letter, she gave herself a mental shake and turned over the sheet of paper.
Thea and Gran were haranguing me about talking through some of the things that might have led to that awful night at the observatory, so I’ve decided to see a therapist (God, I HATE that word!), to help me to come to terms with the stuff I’ve been running away from for all these years. It’s early days, but one of my therapist’s first suggestions was that I try to find ways to process the little things, find the wins, as a way to tackle the larger things, and so I thought that sending this to you was a good way to start. This isn’t to put pressure on you, though. I know that you’ve also got a lot to work through, and our broken pieces won’t automatically fit back together.
Charlotte felt the relief washing over her, both that her first assumption was wrong, and also that Tristan was obviously trying to work on the issues that had dogged him for so long. That could only be a good thing.
I do miss you. I’d love to see you again, if you’d like to see me. If you’d rather not, though, please just accept the enclosed as a gift. I think it will have a better home with you than if it stays with me.
Yours,
Tristan
Putting the letter down on her desk, Charlotte delved back into the parcel and drew out a wooden case. In a flash, she knew what the box contained. Carefully, she put the case down on her desk next to the letter, flipped the brass catches and lifted the lid. And there, nestled in its protective black velvet lining, was the Unitron Refractor telescope.
Charlotte knew better than to try to lift it out of the case. One of the first things she’d learned when she did her qualifications as an archivist was never to just delve in and grab any artefact, to make sure your hands were clean, and you were as calm as you could be. Her hands were trembling too much to risk it now. So instead, she just gazed at the beautiful instrument as the tears started to fall.